We had a great week in first grade!

Reading - This week we continued to practice building stamina.  We added the fifth and final component of daily 5 - word work.  The word work center will change every few weeks.  The first weeks of school the word work center is all about ABC order.  

This week we worked on rotating through all of the centers.  I have also started running records on the students.  A running record is when the students read stories to the teacher.  During the reading, I am marking errors, self corrections, and making notes on the reading of the student.  After the book, the student is asked comprehension questions.  The accuracy and comprehension percentages are used to find the student's reading level.  

After all running records are completed, we will be able to start guided reading groups during our daily 5 time.  So far I have 3 running records completed.  Hopefully by the end of this week, all running records will be completed.  They take quite a bit of time, so it may take until next week.  

The students are loving daily 5 time!  The centers are - read to self, read to someone, listening, work on writing, and word work.  Here are some pictures of daily 5 from the week.

Phonics - This week we finished up our unit on CVC words and had a unit test.  Then we started our next unit on digraphs.  Digraphs are two consonants together that make a new sound.  The digraphs that we are learning are wh, ch, sh, th, and ck.  We also learned how to tap our digraphs.

We have two new trick words from our new unit - as and has.  We worked a lot on dictation this week - I say a sound, the students write the sound.  I say a word, the students write the word.  I say a sentence, the students write the sentence.  Sometimes dictation is on our white boards and sometimes it is in the composition notebook.  

Math - This week we worked on shapes and patterns using pattern blocks and we worked on doubles.  We learned the names of shapes and how many sides / angles they have.  We learned about AB patterns and ABB patterns.  We did a lot of practice on our doubles facts.  We played many doubles games on the SMART Board.  One of our favorites is a doubles version of shoots and ladders!  We are getting really good at doubles!  The big ones are tricky - but we are starting to memorize them!

Some of our pattern block patterns and creations -

Religion - This week we continued reading from our textbook.  We read more about God creating the world.  We also read about seeds.  Then we read the parable of The Mustard Seed.  Next we planted some mustard seeds for real.  They are so tiny!  Hopefully we see them sprout this coming week!  We also made our own Mustard Seed parable books.  

We continued working on our virtues and values cards.  We worked on two more cards from our word - Respect.  The next two cards were - Not interrupting someone who is talking on the phone and Not laughing at others.

Friday we had our first Promise Paper of the year.  The Promise Paper is a little newspaper for kids.  The theme each week revolves around the Sunday Gospel.  This week the Gospel was from the book of Matthew.  (Matthew 20:1-16)  It was about a vineyard owner who hired people to work for him throughout the day.  He paid everyone the same wage, even though they didn't all work the same amount of hours.  We learned about the quote - "the last shall be first and the first shall be last".

Science / Social Studies - This week in our Einstein weather kit we learned about thermometers.  We are learning how to read them.  It can be tricky!  Each line on the thermometer is 2 degrees.  We continue to monitor the weather each day (cloud cover, precipitation, and wind) and we are keeping track on our weather calendar.

A Few FYI's

*We did our second MAP test on Friday.  This week we will do our make ups - What that means is we have a few students who didn't quite finish.  They are close - maybe 10/15 questions left.  They will have time to finish the tests up this week.  The students are getting much better with their mouse skills!  Double clicking can be pretty tricky for them!

*Wednesday, September 23rd is picture day.

*Friday, September 25th - No school!

*Lysol Spray - If you can find any Lysol spray, please think about donating it to school.  We sanitize with Lysol every day - multiple times a day.  We would appreciate any donations!  Thank you!

A few recess pictures - This week we read a book about hula hooping - so 

I brought my hula hoops to school.  The kids are loving them!

Have a great week!

 We had another great week in first grade!

Reading - This week we practiced and practiced read to self, read to someone, and listening.  We did add the fourth component - work on writing.  The students are loving the writing center right now.  Some of the choices for the writing center are writing stories, recipes, lists, post cards, friendly letters, cards, and poems, making squiggles, and writing the room.  This week we will continue to build stamina with all four - and then start adding the fifth component - word work.  

Phonics (Fundations) - We are continuing to work on CVC words.  This week we used sentence frames for the first time.  We use the sentence frames to write sentences.  (Here is a picture of sentence frames from the Wilson Fundations website.)

Each sentence frame is one word.  If there is a high part in the beginning the students know it will be a word that starts with a capital letter.  There are also sentence frames for punctuation at the end of the sentence.  This week I dictated a sentence and the students had to write the sentence on their white boards.  We then had students come to the board and put their words on the sentence frames.  

The words in the sentences contain another new thing for us - trick words and vocabulary words.  (The vocab words are also know words of the day.)

In fundations trick words are another word for sight words.  Last week our trick words were 

a, the, and, of, is, and his.

The vocabulary words are words that are something we are currently studying.  Our current unit is CVC words.  Our first vocabulary word was fix.

Writing - We continue to work on our writing skills.  We worked on another sheet with four choices.  This week the theme was - What is your favorite food?  The 4 choices were soup, burgers, hot dogs, and pizza.  We will continue to work on the four choices sheets, write in our Fundations journals, and write in daily 5.  We continue to work on only using a capital letter for the first word in the sentence, finger spacing, using punctuation at the end of a sentence, and drawing a wow picture to go with your work.  We will also continue to work on our handwriting.  We have handwriting pages that we work on throughout the week both during writing and phonics - as well as using our Fundations whiteboards to practice correct letter formation.

Math - This week in math we worked on addition story problems, doubles facts, and identifying rectangles.  We used cubes to work out our story problems and our doubles facts.  Doubles are addition equations where the two partners are the same.  (1+1, 2+2, 3+3, etc.)  We practiced doubles up to 10+10=20.  We learned a fun song called the doubles rap.  You can click on it here.

http://www.viewpure.com/8jOzhiACB68?start=0&end=0

When learning about rectangles, we learned that rectangles have four sides and four angles.  They are different from squares - although squares have four sides and four angles - all four sides are the same size. With rectangles, there are two short and two long sides.  We used geoboards to make squares and rectangles.

Religion - This week we read out of our text for the first time.  Our first chapter was titled Jesus is our friend.  After reading though the assignment was for us to draw a picture of people that we love.  :)  We continue to practice our prayers - this week we added The Glory Bee to the prayers we are learning/practicing.  We continue to work on the sign of the cross and genuflecting.  This week we also started working on our virtues and values cards.  Our first virtue word is RESPECT.  The cards show us what respect looks like and sounds like, shares a prayer, and has a saint.  So far our two virtues cards have shown respect looking like not interrupting others when they are speaking and listening attentively to others.

Science/Social Studies - This week in our Einstein Kit we learned about wind.  We are keeping a wind graph for one week.  We also learned about observing the weather with our senses.  (eyes, ears, hands, and nose.  We're not using the mouth in science. :)  We are also working on a weather calendar for the month.  We keep track of three things.   

Cloud cover (cloudy, partly cloudy, sunny, or foggy)

Precipitation (rain, snow, hail, no precipitation)

Wind (no wind, some wind, strong wind)

We didn't work on a Scholastic News this week - we did the MAP test instead.  We will for sure get to it next week!

A  Few FYIs

*We did our first MAP test Friday.  We will have our second MAP test this coming Friday.  Please keep reviewing mouse skills with your child.  Make sure your child has a good breakfast and gets plenty of sleep.  Thank you!

*Friday, September 18th we will have our first Packer dress day!

*Lysol spray - If you can find any Lysol spray, please think about donating it to school.  We use it at least twice a day every day on the carpets, lockers, mailboxes, chairs, seat sacks, and anything soft that we can't use wipes on.  We would appreciate it so very much!!!

A few recess pictures -

Have a great week!  :)

Our first full week of school is complete!  We had a great week!  Here are some of the things we worked on this week -

Reading - We are working on learning about the parts of Daily 5 reading / guided reading.  The components of Daily 5 are read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, work on writing, word work, and meet with teacher.  (Meeting in a small reading group with the teacher.  The reading group consists of readers who are at similar reading levels.)  Daily 5 is going to have to look a little different this year as we navigate how to be in centers while socially distancing and rotating through manipulatives and books.  We are doing our best to make it work!

So far we have introduced and practiced read to self and read to someone.  We call our practice building stamina!  Friday we started talking about the listening center and had a little bit of time to practice that component.  This week we will rotate through these three centers and continue to build stamina.  We may (or may not) get into the next component this week - work on writing.

The listening center apps/websites that we use are Raz Kids, Vooks, Epic, and Storyline Online.

Read-Aloud - Every day we end the day with a few chapters from a chapter book.  We are starting the year off with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.

Phonics (Fundations) - We have been working on reviewing all of the letters, keywords, and sounds.  We have been practicing the correct way to form the letters and use the correct spaces.  We have been using our white boards to practice our letters and dictation.  We have working on tapping out sounds.  We are currently working on CVC words (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant).  We used our magnetic tile boards for the first time on Friday to practice making CVC words and tap them out.  I've attached the letter keyword sounds poster and the handwriting lines for you to see what we are working on.

Henry practicing letters

Writing - We have been working on our writing skills.  We have fundations journals that we use to write.  So far we wrote in our journals about what we did on the weekend and something we are thankful for.  ( - After reading a book about being thankful! )  We also have been working from some sheets that give us four choices of something.  For instance - What is your favorite bug?  There are four choices.  You choose one (or more) and write your sentence.  We are working on only using a capital letter for the first letter of the sentence, using finger spacing, using punctuation at the end of the sentence, and drawing a "wow picture" to go with your writing.  

Math - We use Saxon Math - which is a spiraling curriculum.  It goes over many topics multiple times over the course of the year.  Some things we've worked on so far have been counting with pennies, ordinal numbers, basic shapes, beginning addition equations, beginning story problems, left and right, splitting something in half, and a basic graph, just to name a few topics.  We worked with our wrap-ups for the first time this week. Wrap-ups can be a little tricky!  They rocked it!  Reminder - the students do not need to do the side B "homework" side of the Saxon math.  Side B is exactly what we did in class.  If you want your student to do it at home - of course they can do it.  It does not need to be returned.

Religion - We read another story out of our Children's Bible - the story of Adam and Eve.  We have been working on saying prayers - The Our Father, The Hail Mary, and Bless Us O Lord.  We also sing the Johnny Appleseed prayer often.  Have your child sing it to you!  :)  We've been practicing the sign of the cross and how to genuflect.  This week we will start working out of our Religion book for the first time.

Science / Social Studies - We are working on a weather unit in an Einstein Kit.  So far we have talked about our favorite weather, weather words, using our senses with weather, and what a meteorologist is.  We also use Scholastic News for science/social studies.  We read a Scholastic News each Friday.  So far the topics our our Scholastic News have been "Let's Stay Healthy" and "Thank You Community Workers".

***A few FYI's***

Dress Code - A few reminders - The colors for bottoms are navy blue, brown, khaki, and black only. The bottoms are also to be cotton twill, broadcloth, or corduroy.  (uniform type bottoms)

Hoodies are never allowed in the classroom - with the exception of Holy Cross sweatshirts on spirit wear Tuesday.

The dress code is in the handbook for your reference.  If you ever have any questions about the dress code, just ask.  :)

MAP Testing - First grade will be MAP testing Friday, Sept. 11th and Friday, Sept. 18th.  The MAP test is done on a laptop with a mouse.  Please take some time to go over how to use a mouse with your child.  There are many children who are unsure how to click, double click, etc.  Practicing how to use a mouse will be incredibly helpful for the test!  Make sure your student has a good breakfast and gets plenty of sleep!  :)

A few recess pictures -

Have a great week!  :)